After almost a year since the SNP’s landslide victory we have a date – Autumn 2014. The most important referendum in Scottish history, on whether or not we stay in a Union dominated by the right-wing, a state that invaded Iraq, imposes nuclear weapons on the Clyde, destroyed Scotland’s industrial base, or whether we become an independent nation with the power to fundamentally change Scotland for the better and which reflects the left of centre political terrain instead of being dominated by the Tory home counties.
The referendum date has been announced after months of whining from the Unionist parties, all of which have been in disarray since the SNP’s victory. Labour, the Libdems and the Tories all called for a referendum to be held as soon as possible after the SNP’s victory – ignoring that when the SNP was a minority administration they all refused to support the SNP’s call for an independence referendum in 2011.
They must be kicking themselves now – the poll on Scotland’s future will now take place after 2 years of a vicious Tory austerity package that will disproportionately affect Scotland’s economy, which itself has a higher than average public sector employment due to destruction of Scottish industry in the 80’s by Thatcher. If it comes down to choosing between a Government led by Alex Salmond in Holyrood and many years of continued Tory rule in Westminster even non-nationalist Scots may vote Yes as an “exit strategy” from Tory misrule.
This fear of a referendum being held at the height of Tory cuts is probably what motivated Cameron – along with typical Unionist arrogance – to try to bring the referendum under the control of Westminster. After 300 years of Scotland having no say in whether or not we stayed in the Union Westminster is now very concerned that Scots should have a fair say in it, even going as far as to say a referendum held by the Scottish Parliament would be “illegal” and “unconstitutional”. A bit ironic given that the UK has no written constitution – it has Kings, Queens, Princes, Dukes, but no constitution.
At the end of the day, no referendum carried out is “binding” under UK law – all of them are advisory. And if there’s a majority yes vote for independence, it does not matter whether it’s in 2012 or 2014 – politically, the Union is finished. After years of snidey slagging of Scots as “subsidy junkies”, “dole scum”, too wee to go it alone etc, Conservatives in England are beginning to wake up to the reality of Scottish Independence – the British state would be “Shorn of its permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council and relegated to minnow status in Nato”.
Unfortunately for the Tories who have less MP’s in Scotland than there are Panda’s, they’re unlikely to have any impact in stopping the breakup of the UK. Cameron’s intervention into the timing of the referendum shows he has zero tactical knowledge of the Scottish political scene. The Unionist pillar of political strength in Scotland is the Labour Party, who have still not recovered from their defeat of 2007 let alone last year’s humiliating rout.
Despite the disparity in political strength between the SNP and it’s Unionist opponents, by 2014 you can expect the Honeymoon between the Scottish media and the SNP to be over, if not at least on hiatus for the duration of an Independence Referendum campaign. Expect predictions of the apocalypse if Scotland decides to go it alone.
That’s why we need to organise a grassroots Independence campaign to ensure we have our own media to promote the case for Independence – with Socialists adovcating a Republic, public ownership of oil, and taxes on the super-rich, in contradiction to the SNP’s model of Scotland as a Celtic Tiger like, er, Ireland.
Pro-Independence left-wingers don’t just need to organise to win the referendum, but also to shape the future of a post Independence Scotland – to oppose any moves to keep Scotland inside a “Union lite” with British bases kept in Scotland on lease, or where our economy is run along the same Thatcherite lines that condemns a quarter of Scottish children to poverty.
For the first time in decades we have a chance to fundamentally change Scotland and Scottish politics for the better. Lets get organised to build the Socialist Republic.
Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, til even I got bored and went to find somewhere handy to stand, was immense. I got a bit sentimental.
Something is happening in this country at the moment. Ever since the Sheridan debacle everyone who is casually in favour of the Scottish left has dissed us for not being united, and I think this is pish. I’d rather have honest difference than tactical, artificial unity. But at this point in time there is an honest unity, because people are uniting in the face of a common enemy. This enemy isn’t as simple as David Cameron, it’s the threat that he and his ilk represent – the immense threat to the welfare state and the end of a certain way of life, a certain kind of society: a kind of society which many had started to take for granted, and are now turning out to fight for its continued existence. People in Scotland are no longer deciding what kind of country they want to live in; now they know what kind of country they want to live in.
Independence is broadly being discussed as part of the process of achieving this country, but not the way the SNP talk about independence. For us independence is one possible means to a much more important end – not just the right to choose who runs the country without having to vote tactically against the Tories, but the right to choose what kind of a country we live in, what its priorities are, who it values.
The Scottish left have despaired of finding one party behind which to rally, and instead have banded together without one, building coalitions of resistance, new working groups, community groups, and policy-making units as they went. People have organised sporadically and multifariously, have started taking things into their own hands, have started taking responsibility for what is being imposed on their neighbourhoods (Save the Accord Centre campaign, the Save Otago Lane campaign, the Free Hetherington, earlier the Tripping Up Trump campaign). In the face of an overwhelming, despairing feeling that we cannot do anything in the face of the political power that rains down on us, we have decided we’re damn well going to do something anyway.
And I guess that this is the reason that for the first time in my life really I genuinely feel proud to be part of this entity we call Scotland. Here the nation’s history is being rewritten – people are invoking Red Clydeside, the poll tax riots, the shipbuilder work-in and are relating these things to the current uprising in Scotland, in order to construct an alternative historical narrative. This narrative which is the true story of a people who did not need a political party in order to do something. It is a minor narrative – none of these things changed the world, none of these things stopped the onset of neo-liberal capitalism, and we cannot expect the incredible efforts being expended at the moment to stop neo-liberal capitalism. But these efforts are aimed at slowing the imposition on a people of something it did not vote for, of a way of life to which it does not subscribe – a way of life where the only value is monetary, and where only those who have money are entitled to the support and protection of the state.
Something is happening in this country that hasn’t come from nowhere, and that – if this radical history is any indication – isn’t going away. Scotland, no longer proud of its part in the British Empire, of its stake in British wealth and oil, no longer necessarily proud of its industries (although still of its workers) is creating something else to be proud of: a refusal to sit back and watch while the subaltern suffer.
Ok maybe David Cameron wasn’t as blunt as the headline above, but he wasn’t far off it. When SNP MP Angus MacNeil asked the Prime Minister whether he agreed with 68% of Scots that the North Sea oil wealth should be devolved -- i.e. put under the ownership and control of the Scottish Parliament, it’s unlikely David Cameron would have supported the right of Scotland to have exclusive access to such massive wealth. North Sea oil has already been used by the Tories to pay the British States’ million strong giro bill during the Thatcher years, and with massive government cuts approaching it’s a source of wealth the British State can ill afford to lose.
However Cameron’s response was childish and pathetic even by the worst British Unionist standards -- he said “if you ask a stupid question, you get a stupid answer” -- inferring that what Scotland does with it’s own natural resources is “stupid” and that we are also “stupid” for thinking we should have control over it. As Cameron gave his rebuttal the Tory front bench were positively pissing themselves with laughter at the very concept the sweaty jocks from the North could control anything more complex than a deep fat fryer let alone Europe’s largest oil reserves.
It’s this naked arrogance and patronising contempt for Scots that means the Tories are so despised here their frontrunner for leader is talking about disbanding the party itself, and pretending they’re not Tories anymore. Good luck with that one.
It’s not the only piece in the news today about the North Sea’s oil reserves -- the BBC revealed that Old Labour Energy minister Tony Benn tried to buy North Sea oil off British Petroleum for the state owned British energy company. Benn was denied the opportunity, as the Labour Government at that time believed nationalisation of oil went too far -- despite the vast majority of oil producing countries having state owned oil companies, that are to varying levels used to build the infrastructures of their respective states.
No such luck for Scotland though -- we have the dubious honor of being one of only two countries in the world to find oil and get poorer, the other being Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. Declassified civil service documents revealed that the British state deliberately covered up the scale of oil wealth in the North Sea to stop the massive swing towards Scottish nationalism in the 70’s.
Today the movement for Independence is even stronger than then -- opinion polls show a majority of Scots backing Independence, and this is before the Government’s massive cuts are enacted. These cuts would be at the very least reduced if Scotland had access to this oil wealth, instead of having it frittered away by Westminster on Trident and the unwinnable war in Afghanistan. It’s not “stupid” for Scots to ask why we have the poorest cities in Western Europe sitting right next to the greatest source of wealth in Western Europe -- the only thing that’s stupid is allowing an unaccountable clique -- whether it’s Westminster Tories or private oil multinationals laughing all the way to the bank with our money.
The big day is closing up on us, with all the inevitability of a death sentence/England World Cup attempt and all the dread and misery that surrounds the two. David Cameron’s already been using the Royal Wedding as a stick to beat “politically correct” health and safety mad councils, declaring that people should be free to have street parties to celebrate the special day.
Needless to say the same principle does not apply to those want to demonstrate in the City Centre of Glasgow (unless you’re the orange order) or defend much more basic rights to protest at all – as we saw with the wave of political policing a few weeks ago, and now the shocking decision to prosecute Alfie Meadows for “violent disorder”.
Cameron’s argument is also pretty spurious given the total lack of enthusiasm for the Royal Wedding, particularly in Scotland where the only street parties in Glasgow were cancelled due to “lack of interest”. Pro-royalists will point towards a Guardian poll saying that the majority of the UK still thinks the monarchy are “relevant”. Unfortunately there is no regional breakdown of this poll – as it’s almost certain the support for the Royal Family in Scotland will be much lower than in England.
Despite this poll, even the most ardent Royalists must accept there’s a distinct lack of interest around this Royal Wedding compared to previous equivalents – Prince Charles and Lady Diana being the most obvious example. More and more people have had the scales removed from their eyes in how they examine society across the UK – millions of people no longer believe in the political or economic system, and are fundamentally pissed off with Britain full stop. This means there’s a constituency of people – even if it is a minority – who are able to see how unfair and bonkers it is to spend millions on the monarchy whilst politicians demand massive cuts to public services.
But the facts are the monarchy plays a useful role to the class of politicians, bankers, millionaires, media tycoons, industrials and spivs who run the UK. The monarchy are useful in three ways – socially, diplomatically, and politically – to the wealthiest in British society.
To take the first item, the monarchy are useful socially because they instill the idea amongst the population that not only is it ok to be filthy rich, but it’s ok to be filthy rich for no other reason than you were born into it. Given the massive amount of inherited wealth in the UK, that’s an idea a lot of powerful people in the UK would quite like to see made normal and not challenged. In fact, not only is it not challenged but the idea that folk can be millionaires out of our expense is put forward as something good and worth celebrating – somehow we “all benefit” from the monarchy, because of tourists, national unity etc. It’s at this point I would like to remind readers that Mickey Mouse is not made head of state in the USA because of folk going to Orlando, Florida for their holidays.
The monarchy are also useful as diplomats – they can engage in the grubbiest work with dodgy bastards and despots free from criticism. Take Prince Andrew – he’s been a close associate of Colonel Gaddafi, a corrupt Kazakh billionaire, a paedophile businessman and a Libyan arms dealer. Just being linked to one of those is generally enough to force a politician into an insincere, stage-managed, Thick of It damage-limitation style resignation. But not for the Royals – you can’t make them resign, nor can you attack them, lest you damage an “institution”. This makes them very handy for doing the dirty dealings of the British state all around the world. It’s also why the attendees at the Royal Wedding include the people who have been firing upon unarmed demonstrators for democracy all across the Arab world. If just one of these gange of murderers turned up at Labour or Tory party conference there would be an outcry – but because it’s the apolitical Royal Family, we can’t criticise that or be called “unpatriotic”.
The final reason the monarchy are important is the big one – politics. It may seem strange, given that we are repeatedly told that the Queen’s powers are only token – sure she has the ability to dissolve Parliament, but she’d never actually do it etc. The reality is the Crown Power’s of the Monarch have not only been used, they have been used multiple times within living memory.
The Crown Powers have also been used to deny justice for the people of the Chagos Islands – an Order in Council under Royal Prerogative was used to stop islanders who were evicted from their homes to make room for a US military base returning, despite Court rulings that would have allowed them to return.
The powers of the Monarch have gone even further, they have been used to dissolve a democratically elected Government against that Goverment’s will in Australia. Here the Labor Government had won a majority in the House of Representatives but not in the Senate, allowing their political opponents to block the passage of legislation. The Labor Prime Minister went to the Governor General to seek new elections for the Senate – but was instead dismissed by the Queen’s representative in Australia, an unelected Governor General. It’s use of these undemocratic powers which means that just under half of Australians backed Republicanism in 1999.
The campaign group Republic in the UK lists various other abuses of Crown Powers here – including but not limited to the banning of trade unions at GCHQ, the power to go to war and dissolution of Parliament for partisan reasons.
The bottom line is that while the Queen herself may not decide to go rogue and implement a dictatorship, her powers are used by supposedly democratic politicians throughout the rebranded British Empire to bypass parliament and civil rights. Crown Powers are a useful box of tools for these politicians, it’s for those reasons – and not tourism – that the powers of the monarchy still exist.
The Scottish Socialist Party is proud to be the only political party in the mainland UK to organise against the Royal Wedding and for Republicanism. We want an Independent Socialist Republic – different from the SNP’s view of Scotland, which would still have the Queen as head of state, and Crown Powers still able to be used on a supposedly independent Scotland just as they were used on Australia and Canada. We will be supporting two Republican events over the next couple of days,
The first is an SSP Republican Social at 7.30 in Maryhill Central Halls this Thursday. We will be having political speakers, music and song agitating and arguing for a Democratic, Socialist, and Republican Scotland that controls it’s own destiny and where the rights of all it’s citizens are determined by a Constitution – and not a feudal relic.
Secondly – on the big day itself – we are supporting a demonstration on the Royal Mile in Edinburgh, to turn it into a Republican Mile. It’ll be on this Friday from 11.30 onwards and we hope it will provide a useful social for those of Her Majesty’s Subjects who were unfortunate enough not to receive an invitation.
George gets defensive about how many people want him to stand
After lots of threatening to do it over the past 5 years, George Galloway looks set to finally stage a comeback attempt to Glasgow.
This weekend, his party, RESPECT, are discussing the possibility of setting up in Scotland. But before they’ve even had a chance to vote on it, George has as good as said he’s going to do it anyway, if not as RESPECT then as ‘George 4 Glasgow.’
When asked why he’s thinking of doing this, his justification has had two major points: “I am awesome” and that he’s against “separatism.” So we can expect him to run an inspired campaign about how much we need him waffling away in the Scottish Parliament, and against independence. Just check out his recent performance on Newsnight Scotland, where he managed to not mention a single socialist policy, talked about how he was a celebrity and the only piece of politics he did advocate was British unionism:
Demonstrating for a Scottish republic in 2004 on Calton Hill
Yesterday brought news that surprised nobody in Scotland: despite what they promised when they were elected three years ago, the SNP aren’t going to be able to give us a say on independence this year.
After decades of arguing for independence, the SNP finally got their shot at power for the first time in 2007. They published a white paper that, we were told, would lead to the people of Scotland getting to vote in 2010 on the future of the country. But yesterday they announced that they won’t even try putting the referendum bill before the parliament to vote down.
Instead the SNP plan to try and get more seats next year and have the power to push through a referendum in the next parliament, which is a bit like a someone who’s gambled all their money away planning to win it back to pay their debts. As things stand, opinion polls make it look like Labour might get in again next year, in which case the SNP will have missed their biggest ever chance to try and advance independence.
Gettin handouts can be so frustratin Get in line son there’s five million waitin’ The Proclaimers, Cap in Hand
Dole queue under the Tories.
As a central part of actualising Dave Cameron’s glorious vision of The Big Society, the Con-Dem coalition has promised to sweep away the “cycle of dependency” that afflicts Britain’s “pockets of worklessness”. Announcing his new welfare strategy last week, Iain Duncan Smith decried the fact that a majority of benefit claimants have been claiming for nine of the past ten years, that in many areas some families have not worked in three generations and that 1 in 6 children in the UK are growing up in a household in which no one is working.
And you know what? Sitting in the midst of the largest of these “pockets of worklessness” – a barren tundra called Scotland – I agree with him. It is an absolute disgrace that across our land there are families in which three generations have never worked. It is disgusting not just because of the economic waste, but because of the inevitable social problems that arise from mass unemployment; a community in which there are ‘spongers’ will soon spawn an according number of ‘alchies’ and ‘junkies’. All of this amounts to a tragedy for our nation. But it is a tragedy that the Tories, for all their talk, have absolutely no intention of ending.
This may seem a curious assertion to make given that the Tories have only been in power for a few months. However, the following article will go on to show why the Tories were responsible for creating the very ‘underclass’ that they decry. Furthermore, I will also show how this group of hypocrites ideologically depend on the existence of long-term unemployment and that they are the least likely group of people to get the unemployed back into work. In short, this article will show why the Tories knowingly create the very ‘spongers’ that they spend so much time demonising. Read the rest of this entry »
Below we feature a guest post by Meritxell Ramírez Ollé, a student at the University of Edinburgh, co-creator of a new online local newspaper (Vacarisses Digital) in her hometown of Vacarisses, Catalonia, and a supporter of Catalan independence.
On Saturday, over a million people marched through the streets of the Catalan capital of Barcelona, led by a large banner proclaiming, “We are a nation, we decide ourselves”. The demonstration, which has been widely reported as the largest in the history of Catalonia, was a response to the sentence issued by the Spanish Constitutional Court on the Statute of Autonomy of Catalonia (the charter for Catalan self-rule).
A regressive sentence amid a manipulated decision-making process
Around 2005, in the context of Spain’s system of regional devolution, some in Catalonia felt that it was necessary to revise the earlier Catalan Statute, dating from 1979, and set out a draft for a new charter. Eventually, in 2006, the Statute was passed by both the Catalan and Spanish Parliaments, and it was endorsed in 2006 by a popular referendum in Catalonia. However, the Popular Party (PP) (the main right-wing opposition party in Spain) and the Spanish ombudsman (a holdover from the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) [read: the Spanish version of the Labour Party, who are currently in government – Ed.]) appealed the renewed Statute to the Constitutional Court.
The decision-making process of the Constitutional Court (CC) during the issuing of its ruling was not free from controversy: the mandates of three of its twelve members expired nearly two years ago and have not been renewed, and another judge died during his term and has still not been replaced. Despite all the legal abnormalities, and the fact that the CC is a political body whose members are handpicked by the two major parties in Spain, the response to the PP’s and the Spanish ombudsman’s appeal was eventually published one week ago. It briefly concludes:
1) There is no legal basis to recognise Catalonia as a nation. As the Court obsessively makes sure to state twelve times in the text of the sentence, “the only nation within Spain is the Spanish one”.
2) The Catalan language should not be prioritised over Spanish in Catalan administrations, public media and in schools, despite the marginalisation it suffered for centuries and the minority use of Catalan in public spaces.
3) The Catalan people are recognised as “a people” but without any political or juridical powers. The Court aims, with this decision, to underline that the only sovereign people are the “Spanish” people.
4) Although Catalonia has a recognised deficit of investment from the Spanish Government, it cannot ask for similar levels of fiscal autonomy to the Basque tax system, comparable to that of any EU Member State.
5) The judiciary power will remain centralised in Madrid.
A Constitutional sentence above Catalans’ will
While the two main parties in the Spanish Parliament (PP- PSOE) have accepted the sentence with all its legal irregularities, all Catalan parties, except for the Popular Party (PP) in Catalonia and the small Anti-Catalan Nationalism Party (Ciudadanos), are unanimous in their analysis. They argue for respect for Catalonia’s identity and for what the Catalan people have voted for in a binding referendum, which the Spanish Constitutional Court has undermined. However, Catalan leaders differ in their suggestions as to how to come out from this political cul-de-sac. On the one hand, the Catalan Socialist Party (PSC) and the Catalan Eco-Socialist Party (ICV) in office, and the centre-right Catalan Nationalist Party (CiU) insist on re-negotiating with the Spanish Government a new agreement regarding Catalonia’s national ambitions into the Spanish Constitution. On the other hand, the left-wing Catalan Independence Party (ERC) (also in office), and the ex-Barcelona Football Club president, Joan Laporta, who has just created a new party, Democràcia Catalana, advocate for Catalonia’s secession from Spain. In this sense, Saturday‘s demonstration was clearly dominated by pro-independence sentiments and positions, and it is probable that the upcoming Catalan elections in November this year will also be framed around the issue of independence.
The CC’s 2010 sentence: the latest (and last!) frustrated attempt for a federal Spain
However, the debate over the CC’s judgement, and of Catalonia’s relationship with the Spanish state, is not a new issue. The attempt to create a federal Spain, with Catalonia on the inside, has been at the heart of much of the country’s modern history, but it has continued to fail, often with fatal consequences for Catalonia. In the 19th century, the First Spanish Republic, established in 1873 by the Catalan federalist Estanislau Figueras I de Moragas failed as a result of anti-federalist coups and ended up with the restoration of the Bourbon monarchy.
Later, the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in 1931, and the first Catalan Statute in 1932, were overthrown by the fascist Francisco Franco and led to the bloody civil war in 1936. As George Orwell describes in his book Homage to Catalonia, written while he served as both a private and a corporal in Catalonia and Aragon in 1936, the effects the civil war had on Catalonia were devastating.
After 35 years of dictatorship, and after the passing of the Constitution of 1978, Spain created a unique system of regional autonomy, known as the “state of the autonomies”. The result of this system was nothing but a constitution full of ambiguities in its most fundamental aspects, and autonomous territorial structures that did not satisfy anyone, but all political parties accepted it for fear of returning to the ‘old times’ of the dictatorship.
The calculated ambiguity of the Spanish Constitution (which continually needs to be interpreted) requires that all important laws affecting legal autonomy are the result of negotiation, and should be ultimately interpreted by the CC. The latest episode of this process of negotiation was the political sentence of the CC issued last week. This time, the CC has sent one more clear messages to the Catalans: ‘the will of the citizens of Catalonia doesn’t matter, because here we are the only sovereign institution that can make use of democracy’. Therefore, with this sentence, the situation is not ambiguous anymore: Spain is expelling us; Spain has no room for the Catalan, if it not under its subjugation and national indignity. At that point, in my opinion, the only road to a decent future for Catalonia is our political independence. But, that’s a story for another post.
In honour of our 300th blog post, Leftfield brings you the EPIC SAGA of Scotland’s long-standing resistance to the Tory hordes of England:
When SSY members were born, like all Scots they were inspected. If they showed any sympathy for the Tories, they would have been discarded. By the time they could stand, they were baptised in the fire of combat. Taught never to retreat, never to surrender, taught that resistance to the Tories was a service to Scotland and the greatest glory they could achieve in their lives. At age 7, as is customary in Scotland, children are taken from their families and plunged into primary 3.
Manufactured by 300 years of the Act of Union, to create the finest socialists the world has ever known. Taught to show no pain, no mercy, constantly tested, tossed into the wilds of Dumfriesshire, Clydesdale and Tweedale, left to pit their wits and will against posh farmers’ fury. It was their initiation, their time in the wild, for they would return to their people as a socialist, or not at all. The Tory begins to circle the revolutionaries, claws of steel, heart as black as night, eyes glowing red -- jewels from the pit of hell itself. The rabid Tory is sniffing, savouring the scent of the cuts to come. It’s not fear that grips them, but only a heightened sense of things. Cold air in their lungs, windswept banner moving against the coming riot cops. Their hands are steady, their form perfect. The Tories are defeated!
Tory voter shows the hidden goat path into Scotland
And so the young socialists, given up for dead, returned to their people, to sacred Scotland, victorious. It’s been 13 years since the Tories, the cold, and now, as then, a beast approaches, patient and confident, savouring the meal to come. This beast is made of Tories and Lib Dems, Lords and Ministers, an army of civil servants vast beyond imagining, ready to devour tiny Scotland. Ready to snuff out the world’s one hope for reason and justice. A beast approaches.
Although Scotland stands united against the Tories, one solitary constituency (perhaps disgruntled about their horrific disfigurements as a result of inbreeding amongst their posh, landed families) decided to betray their people by showing the Tories their hidden goat path into Scotland. Now it falls on the shoulders of a new generation of socialist warriors to defeat the assembled hoardes of the ConDem occupation. We do not wish tributes or songs (unless they come in the form of blog posts or funny videos), our wish is simple: an independent socialist Scotland!
(Credit to Liam T for his tireless work creating our amazing video and pictures, and to Jack and TheWorstWitch for additional writing. Seriously Turbo you are amazing.)
After 13 years out of Government -- the bastards are back. And in the ironies or ironies, it was with the help of Guardian readers; the Tories are in power thanks to a leg up from the Lib Dems, millions of people who voted for the abolition of Trident and other progressive policies will now know that their votes have in fact counted towards keeping an Eton schoolboy in office.
David Cameron has risen from riches to riches, in a fairytale story of triumphing by paying to bypass any kind of small adversity. With only a ragband crew of the Murdoch press, billionaire tax exiles and 200 years of ingrained privilege, the Tories have been able to scrape back into power in coalition with people called Tarquin who wear sandals and like Tibet.
Liberal Democrat Federal Council meets to discuss coalition plans
SSY is already negotiating it’s own constitutional solution to the crisis, by proposing a land swap -- England shall receive Dumfries, Clydesdale and Tweedale (the only Scottish constituency to vote in a Tory) and in exchange Scotland will offer political asylum to the North of England.
On a more serious note, this development will put the national question back to the top of the agenda in Scotland. After only voting in one Tory MP, Scotland is again run by a Tory prime minister -- the Liberal support does not increase the legitimacy of the Government by much, and very few Liberal voters in Scotland will back what the Lib Dems have done. The devolved Scottish Parliament will not be able to stop the cuts -- Westminster decide the budget, and the Tories planned budget cuts will disproportionately hammer Scotland due to the higher % of public sector workers -- itself a product of de-industrialisation under Thatcher.
Only Independence and Socialism will give Scotland the democracy it’s citizens deserve and the protection against poverty, cuts, low pay, and unemployment the next Tory/Liberal Government will bring. The SSY is the only group of young Socialists in Scotland which has fought consistently since our founding 10 years ago for independence as a necessary part of the struggle for Socialism in Scotland.
The You Tube clip below of William Wallace being tortured by an evil unionist bastard wearing a Santa hat accurately depicts SSY’s strongly held feelings on the issue of Tory rule of Scotland.
Turning out to the annual STUC march – held yesterday in Glasgow – I witnessed thousands of people marching in the pouring rain (and it really was monsoon level) for over three hours, and rallying at the end of it. Watching everyone come into the park at the end, and then watching them keep coming and keep coming and keep coming, til even I got bored and went to find somewhere handy to stand, was immense. I got a bit sentimental.
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